What am I working on now

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Simon Morley

Other than the standard PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi jobs, I seem to be immersed in a number of reasonably exciting design projects right now.

Can’t complain either, it’s always a pleasure working on something creative not just writing code.

Current Websites Include:

Wild Swans – London based Scandinavian Fashion Retailer

Wild Swans – the UK’s leading Scandinavian fashion store. I’ve been tasked to modernise their existing site and integrate with a high-end commercial shopping cart.

Created a custom WordPress integration so the owners can quickly edit pages without having to faff with html or code. Good lesson in php, custom widgets etc.
Importing the blog from blogger ensuring pages titles etc. are preserved.
Setting up a monthly newsletter campaign using our spanking new system.
Integrating with commercial shopping cart.

Go live’s due at the end of the month.

Once Was England – In Memory of a Vanished Land

Once Was England – a highly regarded lifestyle blog covering all things from a vanished land. The site’s being moved to a WordPress blog and a sub-site created around the popular page, previously held on Tumblr.com

Another custom WordPress integration designed to mimic the existing simple style. Once Was England has grown up and a larger site is now required.
Importing the blogs, images and comments from Tumblr to WordPress – no easy task…
Setting up an online shop from where OWE will sell fine English wares.

Go live’s set for this week…fingers crossed.

PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi – The UK’s Leading Wi-Fi Hotspot Company

Ok, a bit of a cheat this one but still important… I’ve just redone the existing site moving it from our previous CMS (Business Catalyst) into yet another WordPress blog.

Live 11th Jan 2011. Check it out here…

Other stuff:

Getting back on the bike after breaking my foot in November 2010. Got to lose some Christmas pounds.
Organising my 30th birthday which looms closer everyday.
Lusting after bike porn and spending too much time reading bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com
Enjoying the Boris Bikes
Missing my cat who ran away on Friday…

How you should use Twitter

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Simon Morley

This one’s written for a friend whose tumblr blog needed a few more visitors. He asked me to help and I suggested that Twitter might be one way to achieve this. After verbalising his distaste for a few moments he came round to the idea. Here’s what we did:

Created a twitter account – free and simple to do.
Set the tumblr blog to automatically post to twitter. (Most blogs allow this.)
Added a nice background to his twitter profile and put up a picture.

The next thing to do is get followers on Twitter. Here’s what we recommend, in no particular order, just do them all:

Find people on Twitter that post similar things (like fashion). Follow them.
Follow the people that are following the people you’re interested in.
Search for people who send interesting tweets. search.twitter.com is a good place to start. Follow them all.
Create lists of people you like. Like the PolkaSpots one here.
Read the tweets of the people above and ‘retweet‘ them. This sends the tweet out to the people who follow you.
Comment on people’s tweets and retweet them – be human.
Read lots of websites everyday and use the ‘Tweet Me’ button to send interesting things out.
Post links but not too many.

Things not to do:

Never follow more than about 100 people day (max) otherwise you’ll be suspended. We were stuck for ages on this one.
Never never never never never never use / pay for services to get twitter followers.
Never never never never never never send spam out
Never blatantly advertise yourself / services. It’s not cool

That’s it, have patience – it doesn’t happen over night.

Make friends not war

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Simon Morley

You’ll get an unpleasant feeling in your stomach when you notice your copy on another website. The sad truth is that if you write decent copy, it’s likely to happen to you. The Internet lends itself to plagiarism and it seems almost acceptable these days. It’s not and fortunately, if it happens to you, you’re well protected (although you will almost certainly have to spend some time with the lawyers).

Intelligent people don’t copy and paste. They’ll adapt, bend and grow their own story from your copy. This is pure evolution and it helps you grow too. Without competition, the world would be a very dry place.

Over the last 12 months, we’ve discovered 3+ companies who’ve borrowed our copy for their own sites and weblogs. We let the first one continue (I will explain in a later post), the second one took the offending copy down and the third ended up in court and landed a fine that almost sent them out of business.

How to deal with it

Blatant copy / paste plagiarism is simple to tackle. Write a firm but polite message to them asking them to remove it. It’s likely they’ll panic and remove it immediately. Rightly so.

If they refuse, find a decent copyright lawyer and send them the offending copy along with your original. Remember, it’s not worth dragging them through the courts unless you know they can afford it. The fines are hefty these days – only those with money in the bank or a decent insurance policy will pay.

Subtle copyright infringement is still worth pursuing. You can receive compensation from a company on the basis that they’ve profited from your ideas.

You can’t really copyright an idea.

And you can’t stop your competition from copying your prices. However, ideas are nothing without good implementation… Think about it.

Make friends not war

In today’s market, it’s better to be friends with your competitors than enemeies. At PolkaSpots, we routinely share information between a select group of Wi-Fi companies. It’s one of the main reasons for our growth this year but was not well received when we started. After all, would you trust your competition? Try it, just be careful.

An accidental holiday in France

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Simon Morley

Last Friday, I failed myself… My first rule of blogging is to write your posts in advance and publish over a week or so. I went away by accident and didn’t write enough to cover the trip.

Last Thursday I headed off to a music festival in Stratford upon Avon with a certain special someone. We arrived a day early – the festival wasn’t open yet. Regardless, we camped in an empty field and woke up surrounded by cars.

Queuing for tickets, we quickly realised that they were having a laugh. They were trying to make us pay for our concessionary VIP tickets; alcohol was banned in the campsite; food was also a no go. What kind of festival was this.

Without hesitation, we jumped in the car and headed to a different festival in Knebworth. Upon arrival, we discovered the ticket price…

Desperate for a break, I couldn’t face the thought of another day in London (sorry London). Two hours later we were camping in Kent. The next day we were in Stella Plage, a French holiday resort, one hour from Calais. We were on a sunny beach enjoying a few beers and the warm breeze.

Get away or face a burnout

You realise how easy it is to refresh your mind and body at virtually no cost and with virtually no hassle.

Next time you’re feeling a bit glum, jump on a plane or train and see where the adventure takes you. Just don’t forget to publish your blogs in advance!

Use the tools and publish everyday.

Posted on July 24, 2010 by Simon Morley

I wrote this blog from a garden centre, somewhere in Shropshire on Wednesday afternoon. I’m killing a few minutes between a site visit and a 250km drive back to West London. The perfect place to write a blog – no distractions, coffee and some ice cream

These days, my time is always limited. In the office, I’m constantly bombarded by questions, emails and phone calls. Everyone needs some space to write something interesting.

Amazingly, I’m not always near an Internet connection despite being the proud owner of polkaspots.com! And yet, I publish a blog everyday…

By using all the tools you have, you can easily write half a dozen blogs in one go and then publish them automatically over a week or more. New blogging software does this at the click of a button.

This means your readers still get their daily digest despite the fact that you’re half-way up a mountain or on a beach. It also means you can relax a bit more.

It also means, you can come back and check your blog before it goes out for typos. If you feel like writing, sit down and write.

Wordpress makes it simple to publish your blogs in advance

Find your blog’s identity

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Simon Morley

In a couple of other posts, I’ve mentioned that my blog’s moved around more times than it should have.

When it started on blogger.com, I was writing about the PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Service but we already had a blog over there, so I was always a bit lost.

Over time, my blog was neglected and my posts weren’t doing anything for me or PolkaSpots.

Last November I found myself in the middle of the Zambian bush. I was there to help Link.net.zm install their PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Hotspots. My accomodation was a little, sparse, wooden house. I had a lot of time to think and write and without realising, my posts flooded out.

When I read the blog back, there are typos and spelling mistakes, but I don’t care because they came from the heart and the posts were real. I had something to talk about and the time to write.

If you want to write a good blog, don’t just type for the sake of it or because you think it will help. It won’t.

What is a blog?

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Simon Morley

I’m sitting at my desk when a friend came to ask for some PolkaSpots Internet Vouchers.

Before long we were talking and I asked him if he read my blog. What’s a blog he responded?

I’ve made a mistake writing simonmorley.co.uk: I haven’t started at the beginning.

A blog is a place where people can express themselves online. According to Wikipedia, blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject. Historically they were called Web Logs.

They started out as bland little affairs with some text and maybe a few pictures. Nowadays, entire websites are built around them and include podcasts, videos, photos, forums and everything else you can imagine.

Anyone can write one and there’s loads of software you can use. Most of it’s ridiculously simple. I use WordPress – it took me ten minutes to install and twenty minutes to configure.

You can now subscribe to receive blog entries by email. You can subscribe to mine here.

Warm up and you’ll find your momentum

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Simon Morley

One of my first blogging rules is to find your place of inspiration. A place where your mind can wander off and think of nice things.

Once you’ve found this place and have some ideas in your head, sit down and write your blogs. A few of them – in one go.

Blogging is a little bit like running – you have to practise a lot before you get good. Naturally some of us are better at writing than others, but there’s a blogger in everyone.

If you have a few ideas in your mind, writing them will be easy – they should flow out of you. Once you’ve written one or two, you’ll find your fingers and mind are more flexible.

You don’t even need to publish them in one go. Set your blogging software to publish them in advance or just save a draft so you can come back to them later.

When you should stop fiddling with the Internet

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Simon Morley

I consider myself a serial Internet fiddler. I love tweaking layouts, designs, colours, sizes and shapes. Experimenting with new tools, platforms, blogging software, online shops and more… I spend hours on twitter everyday.

“Sometimes you just need to get on with things”

Last weekend, I spent two hours migrating my blog from Blogger to WordPress. (I know someone who’ll be quite upset when he’s reading this – he thinks I never get anything done.) But that’s my job: I need to understand how and why things work so I can help others choose the best option. And, I have just written this here: importing your Blogger blog to WordPress here.

Spending hours on Facebook or Twitter everyday isn’t productive unless you know what you’re doing. In fact, even writing blogs can be couter productive and damaging to you and your business. We have a list of blogs that we show to clients that are great and another list that are shocking and embarrassing.

“Writing a really bad blog is worse than having no blog at all”

Next time you’re fiddling with your blog or just the Internet, ask yourself the question: “Will this change benefit me?” If the answer’s not yes, don’t do it – and be honest with yourself!

Simon Morley

I like cats, my plants and the Internets. I can't be bothered to make this blog pretty. I write code. What do you do?

Tag Archives: blogging